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R-3049/1

Political Leadership in Yugoslavia: Evolution of the League of Communists (U)

A Ross Johnson

November 1983

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limited to U.S. Government Agencies Only

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The Rand Publications Series: The Report is the principal publication doc-umenting and transmitting Rand's major research findings and final research results. The Rand Note reports other outputs of sponsored research for general distribution. Publications of The Rand Corporation do not neces-sarily reflect the opinions or policies of thP. sponsors of Rand research.

Published by The Rand Corporation

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R-3049/1

Political Leadership in Yugosl,avia: Evolution of the League of Communists (U)

A Ross Johnson

November 1983

Intelligence Information

Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals

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This material contains INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION, as indicate d below:

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R-3049/1 Intelligence Information obtained by Author's Name)

A. Ross Johnson under the authority of (Client

from (Source Agency(sJ) Da te(s) of source material(s)

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er item: Nature of Intelligence Information and location in publication or oth

Intelligence concerning the Yugoslav politica 1 leadership contained on all classified pages.

Neither foreign nationals nor immigrant aliens, regardless of clearan ce, may have access to intel-ligence information without proper authority.

Limitations on use by Rand staff: ed to support the wntract This Rand material contains intelligence information releas

under which this material was prepared. Su.ch information m revealed by Rand to any outside individual or agency (except

ay not be discussed with or the client or source agency)

without permission of the client.

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PREFACE

(U) This report examines the dynamics of political leadership and

the prospects for leadership stability in post-Tito Yugoslavia. It

appraises the importance of the republican vs. the federal political

base of the Yugoslav leadership. It is focused on the evolution of the

League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) since the late 1960s and

especially on the issue of the importance and role of the LCY's

constituent republican and provincial organizations. It attempts to

illuminate the sources and mechanisms of political leadership and

decisionmaking in Yugoslavia and thus to contribute to U.S. government

assessments of Yugoslavia's likely future development and stability.

This study was conducted under a contract with the Office of

the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy and

was funded jointly by that Office; the Bureau of Intelligence and

Research, Department of State; the Directorate of Net Assessment,

Department of Defense; and the Office of European Affairs, Central

Intelligence Agency.

(U) This report is addressed to officers and analysts in the

co-sponsoring agencies and other U.S. government officials. It reviews

developments in the LCY through ~larch 1983 and thus incorporates the

experience of 35 months "after Tito"--a period sufficiently long to

permit assessing the functioning of the political system in the absence

of its architect and former supreme arbiter.

The report is based on a review of Yugoslav and Western open-

source materials, intelligence reports, and discussions with Yugoslav

and western officials and analysts. In the course of the research, the

author spent five ~eeks in Yugoslavia in October-November 1981. He

discussed Yugoslav developments with some 70 federal and republican

Party and government officials, journalists, and intellectuals in

Belgrade, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo, and Skopje. He held additional

discussions in Yugoslavia in July 1982. Some findings from the field

research that contributed to the present study were reported in Rand

~ote N-1813, Impressions of Post-Tito Yugoslavia: A Trip Report, by

A. Ross Johnson, January 19o2.

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This· report is primarily concerned with the issue of how political

leaders emerge in Yugoslavia and deals principally with the LCY. It does

not attempt to provide a general assessment of Yugoslavia's political

or economic prospects, or of Yugoslavia's international position. The

report traces the devolution of power within the LCY over the past 20

years and suggests how leadership authority is established on a decen-

tralized basis and how decisionmaking requires interregional consensus.

Leadership changes and related political controversies are traced for

some of the LCY's constituent republican and provincial organizations--in

Croatia, Serbia, Vojvodina, and Kosovo. Limitations on fieldwork and

difficulties in obtaining regional primary materials precluded more

detailed examination of policymaking at the republican/provincial and

lower levels. The central thesis of this study highlights the

importance of additional attention to the republican and provincial

Party organizations and more systematic analysis of the careers of their

leaders.

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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The Yugoslav political system evolved from centralism in the

initial post-World War II period to federalism in the 1960s and quasi-

confederalism in the 1970s. As the Party introduced a less doctrinaire

and more participatory political system after 1950, Yugoslavia's

multinational composition exerted a major influence on the Yugoslav

polity. Communist leaders of the constituent regions of Yugoslavia (the

six republics and two provinces) pursued regional economic, cultural-

national, and then directly political interests, and this undermined the

supranational Yugoslavism that Tito and the Yugoslav Communists

attempted to forge during and after the Partisan War. The Yugoslav

state was reconstituted on a quasi-confederal basis by the 1974

Constitution. Federal posts were staffed on the basis of

republica11/provincial parity. All-Yugoslav policy decisions required

consensus among the regions.

The Yugoslav Communist Party (known as the League of Communists of

Yugoslavia (LCY) since 1952) has also been decentralized. The ~inch

Party Congress of 1969 rP.cognized the powers of the constituent

republican and provincial LC organizations. The LCY Presidency (or

Presidium), Central Committee, and other bodies were reconstituted on

the basis of parity representation of the republican/provincial LC

organizations. Earlier, the Party Secretariat had been abolished. In

the early 1970s, following an upsurge of nationalism in Croatia and

elsewhere, Tito attempted to reconstruct an autonomous federal Party

center. He failed, because revolutionary supranational Yugoslayism had

dissipated, and because newly appointed regi0nal Party leaders promoted

regional interests even more vigorously than had their purged

predecessors. By the late 1970s, Tito abandoned the attempt to

counterpose a more centralized LCY organizational basis to the quasi-

confederal organizational principles of the Yugoslav state. Instead, he

sought to institutionalize and depersonalize the system of collective

leadership and decisionmaking based bn interregional consensus. The

relatively smooth functioning of this system since Tito's death is

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testimony to both the success of that effort and Tito's diminished

personal role in the political system in his final years.

The LCY continues to affirm that it is a unified political

organization, with one Congress, Central Committee, Presidency, and

other bodies, and that it functions on the basis of "democratic

centralism." Both history and the self-interest of subfederal LCY

leaders argue against any formal change in this principle. Proposals

advanced by LCY theorists since Tito's death to formally modify

"democratic centralism" or otherwise formally proclaim a change in the

principles of LCY organization in the direction of greater explicit

"Party federalization" have not found official support at any level.

But in practice, the LCY has evolved from a centralized to a federal

organizational basis. The Party "center" has become a "federal center."

The federal LCY disposes of almost none of the apparatus of a

traditional Communist Party, although it lacks a Secretariat, a cadre of

central officials, and centralized information channels. The federal

LCY functions on the basis of interrepublican consensus on both policies

and personnel. In recent years, the federal LCY has intervened in the

affairs of only one of its constituent suborganizations, Kosovo, in

1981; and that case involved not "central" intervention but the united

stand of other regional officials under crisis conditions.

The decentralization or "republicanizationn of the LCY appears irreversible. The process of decentralization developed "from below"

(unlike the introduction of "self-management" in Yugoslavia, which was

decreed from above). It was only partially and temporarily reversed by

Tito's efforts at recentralization in the early 1970s. Today there is

no significant support within the LCY for recentralization. It is

instructive to compare the criticisms of excessive decentralization of

the LCY that are being advanced today with similar criticism at the turr

of the 1970s. Then, nearly all reformist Party intellectuals who had

not succumbed to the nationalist bacillus called for reconstruction of

an LCY "political center" entailing recentralization, albeit voluntary

and mutually accepted. 1 Such views suggested that there was some

1 See, e.g., the series of articles in Gledist:a and Praxis in 1971, especially articles by Vojin Rus and Branko Horvat in Gledista, No. 5/6, 1971.

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support within the Yugoslav elite for Tito's efforts at partial

recentralization at that time. Today, such voices are almost totally

absent/ and when they do appear, they are labeled "unitarist," i.e.,

centralist. Since Tito's death, the only significant calls for

recentralization of the LCY have come from Serb theorists or junior

officials who are either known for or immediately suspected of being

motivated by Serbian nationalism. 3

The republican and provincial LC organizations are not "Stalinist"

in either their role in the political system or their internal

organization. Most specific decisions on republican-level policy issues

are reached outside of LC forums, with the communal (opst ina) assemblies

and social councils (drustveni odbori) playing key roles in this

respect. Yet the republican LC organizations remain the ultimate

arbiters on republican-level issues, and in general they play a more

active role vis-a-vis the republican governmental and public machinery

than does the LCY vis-a-vis federal organs.

Dacentrali.zation of the LCY has had common effects on all the

republican and provincial Party organizations. The postwar Communist

generation has gradually supplanted the Partisan generation in the

leadership of all subfederal Party organizations. Leadership rotation

i.;as introduced in the early 1970s; this appeared to be "musical chairs"

among a stable group of professional politicians. Continuity in the

occupancy of regional Party leadership posts existed only for the

president, and the principle of rotation was extended to include the top

republican Party posts as well in 1982.q Judging by analysis of career

2 A notable exception is Fuad ~luhic, the Bosnian Muslim theoretician who has consistently advocated a non-federalized Party as the backbone of a federalized state (see Muhic 1 1981). Yet Hubie declared in late 1982 that there had been insufficient criticism of "uni tar ism" (i.e., centralist tendencies) prior to the Twelfth Party Congress (Muhic, 1982).

l Today. just as in interwar Yugoslavia, Great Serbianism is the only possible national basis for centralism, since Serbs are the largest national group, numbering 36 percent of the total population, and the only group t.:ith co-nationals in most regions of the country.

q Republican Party presidents were chosen for one-year terms in the spring of 1982. In the spring of 1983, some but not all were reelected for a second year, as LCY officials began to reinterpret Tito's legacy of leadership rotation, arguing it was fully valid at the federal level

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profiles in the Croatian, Serbian. and Vojvodina Party organizations,

the republican/provincial Party leaderships acquired a more regional and

less federal character during the 1970s (suggesting a tendency in career

patterns, just as in economic activity, of greater regionalization).

The individual republican/provincial political elites have presented

varying profiles. The Serbian and Croatian elites have evidently

experienced more internal dissension than their counterparts in

Bosnia.,.Hercegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Vojvodina, and

(until 1981) Kosovo. In the last year, more cohesive, moderate, and less

nationalist (in the case of Serbia) leaderships have emerged in Croatia

and Serbia.

Decentralization of the LCY has raised issues for the LC Serbia not

faced by the other subfederal organizations. In the 1970s, as Kosovo

and Vojvodina (constituent provinces of Serbia) gained republic-like

powers, an effort was made to reconcile their status with the integrity

of Serbia as a republic through a divergence between practice and theory . analogous to (but perhaps more transparent than) that which existed in

the federal LCY. The compromise soltitions struck in t.he mid-1970s came

unstuck shortly thereafter, and were subsequently made even more

unworkable by the crisis in Kosovo and the Serbian nationalist backlash

that it fanned. The slogan of the Albanian nationalists, "Kosovo a

Republic, 0 is official heresy in the provinces just as in the Serbian

republic; yet the provincial LC organizations--Vojvodina even more

energetically than Kosovo--continue to demand and largely enjoy

republican- like po•.:ers. The result has been considerable de facto

asymmetrical federalization of the LC Serbia, for the provincial LC

organizations have won a voice in all-Serbia affairs that gives them

influence over developments in faerbia proper (i.e., the area outside the

provinces), whereas Serbia proper has no corresponding say in the

provinces. The issue of ho~ to deal with the provinces has induced a

higher level of differences among and tension within the LC Serbia

leadership than in the other republican Party leaderships.

but had been carried to the extreme at lower levels, e.g., "Experience in the federal organs in a multinational community is one thing, while experience in municipalities and in executive organs is another." (Ribicic interview, Tanjug, December 5, 1982, Foreign Broadcast Information service, FBIS-EEU, December 8, 1982.)

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Regional and organizational affinities in the LCY have proven

stronger than purely national ties. It is the Serbian·dominated LC

Vojvodina leadership that has defended provincial prerogatives

vis-a-vis the LC Serbia, while the LC Bosnia and Hercegovina, in whose

leadership Serbs constitute the largest national group, has strongly

defended the prerogatives of the republican LC organizations and warned

against "Great Serbian" pretensions. Serbs in the LC Croatia

leadership have generally opposed hegemonic tendencies in the LC Serbia.

Outside Serbia.proper, only tha Serbian minority in the Kosovo Party

leadership (still dominated by Albanians) has proven to be an ally of

the Serbian Party. Hence, it is an oversimplification to equate the

divergent interests of the republican and provincial Communist Parties

with nationalism. Tabulations of Yugoslav leaders by nationality alone

are misleading and should be avoided.

Heightened economic problems since the Twelfth LCY Congress of mid-

1982 have challenged the LCY to achieve greater unity and discipline, so

that Yugoslavia can carry out the tough economic stabilization measures

that are required and limit the economic fragmentation of the country.

Whether and ho~ such leadershi~ cohesion can be obtained remains an open

question. There have been no changes in personnel policy or institutional

organization and no internal Party discussions that would point to any

significant possibility of an administrative recentralization of the

LCY. Hence, effective decisionmaking presupposes continuation and

refinement of the process of interregional consensus-building within

the LCY, rather than any alternative. The LCY, like the country itself,

cannot be recentralized. 5

s That judgment should not prejudice appraisal of the outcome of LCY policies (or of the cohesion of Yugoslavia generally). Some recent developments, including ehe results of the 1980 Yugoslav census and public opinion polls, may well signify an increase in dual consciousness in Yugoslavia, involving national identification with a particular nation or nationality but civic identification with Yugoslavia as a state. (Matvejevic, 1982, argues this thesis.) And hypothetical recentraliza~ion imposed by a minority (i.e., by the Serbs), if it could somehow be achieved, could easily worsen raeher than improve the prospects for stability.

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The focus of appraisals of the Yugoslav leadership should be

shifted from the federal to the republican/provincial level. Present

and likely future LCY leaders are (to rephrase Tito) "men from the

republics who are republicans," meaning that they must retain a strong

political base and constituency in a republican LC organization. If the

LCY is to remain a viable and effective political force in Yugoslavia,

federal leaders must presumably view Yugoslavia's interests in somewhat

broader terms than was the case when they occupied republican-level

posts and must act accordingly, retaining some of that all-Yugoslav

perspective when they again move to republican-level jobs. But rotation

of personnel between the republics/provinces and the federation is to be

expected. A "federal" LCY official or any other "Yugoslav" leader who

remains too long in a federal post or otherwise loses support in his

parent republican LC organization is unlikely to have a political

future, either in the federation or in the republic. A new group of

more "centralist" Yugoslav leaders is unlikely to emerge. The first

question to ask about a present or prospective "Yugoslav" leader is not

whether he has advanced "beyond" the republican level but whether he

remains a leading member of the republican political elite.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

D The author would like to express his appreciation to the officers of the Bureau of European Affairs and the Bureau of

Intelligence and Research, Department of State; the American Embassy,

Belgrade; the American Consulate General, Zagreb; the Office of the

Assistant Secretary for International Security Policy and the

Directorate of Net Assessment, Department of Defense; the National

Security Council; and the Office of European Affairs, Central

Intelligence Agency, who facilitated this research in a variety of ways,

including engaging in discussions on substantive issues, providing

access to intelligence and other research materials, and facilitating

field research in Yugoslavia.

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GLOSSARY

AVNOJ Anti-Fascist Council of the Popular Liberation of Yugoslavia cc Central Committee FEC Federal Execu.tive Council

LC League of Communists

LCC League of Communists of Croatia

LCK League of Communists of Kosovo LCS League of Communists of Serbia LCV League of Communists of Vojvodina LCY League of Communists of Yugoslavia YPA Yugoslav People's Army

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CONTENTS

PREFACE

SUMMARY AND CONCLVSIO:\S

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

GLOSSARY

TABLES

Section I. INTRODliCTION

I I. FROM CENTRALISM TO QliASI-CONFEDERALIS~! Economic :\ationalism ................................... . Cultural-Social Nationalism ............................ . Reconstitution of the State

III. HlPACT OF DECE:\TRALIZATION ON THE PARTY Initial Decentralizatio.n ............................... . Attempted Reconstruction of a Party Cent·er · ............. . Reassertion of Republican Influence .................... . The Post-Tito Period ................................... .

IV. DEVELOPHENTS I~ THE REPvBLICA!\ Ai\D PROVI:\CIAL LC ORGA!\IZATIO'.llS ........................................ .

Introduction ........................................... . Leadership of the LC Croatia ........................... . Leadership of the LC Serbia ............................ . The Provincial LC Leaderships .......................... .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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3 3 4 7

13 13 20 27 31

46 46 47 50 54

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TABLES

1. Leadership Turnover in the LCC Presidency ..................... 49 2. Leadership Turnover in the LCS Presidency .................. 51 3. Leadership Turnover in the LCV Presidency . ................... 55 4. Leadership Turnover in the LCK Presidency .................... 57

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BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA

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YUGOSLAVIA

Autonomous province boundary

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I. INTRODUCTION

The following propositions are widely recognized among U.S.

government and other Western officials and analysts who are concerned

with Yugoslavia:

• Yugoslavia is a decentralized country whose six constituent

republics and two "quasi-republics" (Kosovo and Vojvodina, the

constituent provinces of Serbia that have achieved de facto

most of the prerogatives of the republics) play a key role in

economic and political decisionmaking.

•

•

Tito has been "succeeded," not by any individual, but by a

collective leadership, with occupancy of individual positions

rotating frequently.

The Communist Party (known as the League of Communists of

Yugoslavia (LCY) since 1952) differs from Soviet-type Communist

Parties, in both its less disciplined internal organization and

its less directive political role.

These three strands of recent Yugoslav political development have

not been sufficiently analyzed in combination. The process of

interrepublican bargaining in the federal Parliament on sometimes hotly

contested economic and other issues has been observed since the early

1970s. The frequent rotation of Party as well as state leaders has been

equally apparent in the last few years. Western observers have

generally viewed the Party and the army as the principal integrative

institutions in Yugoslavia under the decentralized political and

economic conditions that have prevailed since the early 1970s. Analyses

stressing the confederal nature of decisionmaking in state and public

("self-management") bodies have sometimes posited a "Party center"

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isolated from these decentralized currents. 1 Yet there has been

relatively little analysis of the Party itself. 2

(U) This report. addresses the extent to which the LCY has been

"confederalized" like the rest of the Yugoslav system. 3 As such, the

report seeks to answer the following questions: On what basis--federal

appointment, confederal bargaining, or otherwise--do Yugoslav political

leaders emerge and maintain their positions? By what standards can the

Western observer judge the relative power of various Yugoslav leaders?

What are the implications of this structure for the future of the

political system and the stability of Yugoslavia?

(U) Section II reviews the background of political decentrali-

zation in Yugoslavia outside the Party structure. This summary review,

covering ground familiar to the specialist-reader, is the necessary

context for considering the evolution of the Party itself. Section III

examines the changes in the organization and role of the LCY since the

late 1960s. Section IV considers at greater length key developments

within republican and provincial Party organizations.

1 (U) This was the case with two recent doctoral dissertations on the subject: Burg, 1980; Ramet, 1981. (Full references are given in the Bibliography.)

2 (U) The best treatment is Shoup, 1979. Also, Haber!, 1976, and Carter, 1982, are useful for developments through the mid-1970s.

3 c=]The role of the military as an integrative institution affected by political decentralization is analyzed in two Rand studies, Johnson 1977, 1980; and in a CIA analysi

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II. FROM CENTRALISM TO QUASl-CONFEOERALISM

The Yugoslav Communist political system has, in its 40 years of

existence, undergone far-reaching changes. The revolutionary

dictatorial centralism established at the end of World War II has, with

fits and starts, given way to a post-revolutionary, less coercive,

decentralized system. Tito imposed centralized Communist rule on

Yugoslavia, yet under Tito the Yugoslav state evolved into a

semi-permissive quasi-confederation.

This section will review the major steps in that process as they

affected governmental, administrative, and "self-management"

institutions. 1 Only in the context of this larger political structure

is it possible to understand the evolution of the LCY itself. The Party

leadership and Party organs were, of course, chiefly responsible for

charting and implementing the decentralization of the political system,

but discussion of the impact o~ the Party itself will be deferred to

Section III.

ECONOMIC NATIONALISM

The decentralization of Yugoslavia can be dated to 1965, when a

major economic reform was introduced, intended to ensure economic

development by further reducing centralized state control over the

economy and orienting it more toward world markets.

The primary impulse behind the 1965 reform was the disinclination

of the republican political leaderships in the more-developed .. North" of

the country to continue subsidizing the industrialization of the less-

developed 11South.u 2 The reform spawned so-called "dinar nationalism"--

the espousal by republican officials in the North and South of the

particular economic interests of their respective republics or regions.

1 See Johnson, 1974, for a more detailed discussion. 2 In terms of level of economic development, the 11North" includes

Slovenia, Croatia·Slavonia, Vojvodina, and Belgrade and its Serbian environs; the 11South" includes Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia south of the Sava and Dalmatia, Serbia proper except for the Belgrade area, Montenegro, ~lacedonia, and Kosovo. (See Burks, 1971, pp. 52-59.)

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Once political opposition to the 1965 reforms was overcome with the

ouster of Aleksandar Rankovic (the Party Secretary in charge of cadre

and security affairs and heir-apparent to Tito), 3 their implementation

gave rise to a series of disputes involving republican economic

interests. These conflicts included:

• The Slovene road-building crisis of 1969, when the Slovene

government demonstratively resigned (but later withdrew its

resignation) to protest the exclusion of Slovenia from

participation in a World Bank infrastructural developmental

loan (Slovenia lost that round, but won--i.e., shared in

similar World Bank loans--on many other occasions).

Controversy over the Belgrade-Bar railway project, promoted by

"Southern" Yugoslavia to give the South its own international

port, but opposed by Slovenia and Croatia as a wasteful

duplication of transportation resources (the rail line was

eventually built).

• Disputes over the role in Croatia of Belgrade-based banks and

foreign trade firms, which were accused by Croatian leaders of

siphoning off foreign exchange earnings from tourist and export

industries in Qroatia (the role of the Belgrade firms was

limited in the 1970s). 4

Such economic conflicts, highly political in and of themselves,

fueled more directly political controversy (reviewed below). They were

also the backdrop for--and in some cases directly inspired--the revival

of cultural-social nationalism as well, which in turn further fanned

political conflict.

CULTURAL-SOCIAL NATIONALISM

The Communist Party is the only political force that rose above the

national hatred that undermined the stability of Yugoslavia, a country

3 See Section III. 4 See Johnson, 1974, p. 9.

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with a complex multinational character, during World War II. 5 The Party effectively utilized the slogan "Brotherhood and Unity" in its rise to

power during the war when Yugoslavia was dismembered and occupied by

Nazi Germany and its allies. The "founding" charter of Communist

Yugoslavia, the proclamation of the second session of the Anti-Fascist

Council of the Popular Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ), called for the

reconstitution of Yugoslavia as a federal state that recognized the

autonomy as well as unity of its constituent nations. A federal constitution was promulgated in 1946 to appease national sensitivities,

but the Communist political system imposed after the war was essentially

unitary. Espousing revolutionary; supranational Yugoslavism, the Party

leadership believed that forced socioeconomic modernization would end

the disparity of economic development in different regions of the

country and in the process would forge the many national groups into one

Yugoslav nation.'

The vision of supranational Yugoslavism faded in the 1960s. In the

process of promoting specific regional economic interests, the

republican political leaderships began to stress the cultural/ethnic

interests of their respective national groups. This occurred first in

the republics, with "unhistoric nations" affirming their national

existence for the first time in postwar Yugoslavia (the ~1acedonians in

Macedonia, the Slav Huslims in Bosnia). But it also occurred in the

North, especially in Croatia, where subsidization of the economic

development of the South became a prime national grievance. The

national consciousness of Yugoslavia's constituent "historic" and newly . ~ emerging nat1ona~ groups thus triumphed over the original supranational

"Yugoslav" vision of the Communist Party leadership.

The result was greater linguistic and cultural-national

self-expression in the late 1960s by all of Yugoslavia's constituent

national groups:

5 See Johnson, 1974, pp. 5-6; Hondius, 1968. 6 See Shoup, 1968.

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• Display of national emblems, suppressed in the 1950s by the

secret police, became legitimate.

• Old national anthems were revived and new ones were written, to complement the official state anthem.

• The 1971 census dropped the term "Yugoslav" as a national

• category.

Albanian and Hungarian supplemented Serbian, Croatian,

Slovenian, and Macedonian as official state languages.

• The nationalities (as distinct from the "nations," e.g.,

Romanians in the Vojvodina) established their own cultural

associations and began to use their own languages in dealing

with local officialdom. 7

Given the extent of intermingling of Yugoslavia's many national

groups8

and the recent history of bloody national conflict, it was

inevitable that manifestations of national affirmation within a larger

Yugoslav community would be accompanied by signs of defensive and

exclusive nationalism which, carried to the extreme, portended

secession. As early as 1967, for example, a part of the Slovene

intelligentsia had espoused a form of Slovene nationalism with

separatist and religious overtones. The Slovene political leadership

successfully suppressed this current, while continuing to promote

Slovenia's economic interests within Yugoslavia. 9 At the same time, a

less powerful (but Church-influenced) Serbian nationalist current arose

in Serbia and Montenegro. ~!ore important for the future, as internal

security measures were relaxed in Kosovo following Rankovic's ouster,

Albanian nationalist demonstrations occurred; 10 these served as the

catalyst for the "takeover" by Albanians from Serbs of the political

apparatus in Kosovo.

7 See Johnson, 1974, p. 17. • Yugoslavia's various national groups are not located in compact

regional settlements but are intermingled without assimilation throughout most of the six republics and two provinces; only Slovenia is virtually homogeneous nationally.

9 See Hartl, 1968, pp. 81-111. 10

See Ramet, "Problems of Albanian Nationalism," 1981.

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In 1970-1971, a Croatian nationalist movement gained momentum in

Croatia, a multinational republic. 11 The exponents of Croatian national

interests sought in effect to transform the Serbian population of

Croatia (some 15 percent of the total) into a national minority. The

Communist Party itself in Croatia began to lose political control to an

alternative, non-Communist organization, the Hatica Hrvatska, the

historical Croatian cultural organization that increasingly resembled a

typical nineteenth century national-radical political organization. The

Hatica more than doubled its number of local committees and increased

its membership thirtyfold in a year. Croatian intellectuals debated

the economic "exploitation" of Croatia. Campaigns were begun to oust

Serbian officials and purify the Croatian language of Serbianisms.

Extreme nationalists called for Croatia's membership in the United

Nations, a national army, and even revisions of the republic's borders.

These developments fueled Serbian nationalism in Croatia (and

elsewhere in Yugoslavia); in some regions Serbian nationalists gained

control of local veterans' organizations, thus raising a second

organizational challenge to the Party. After months of indecision, Tito

intervened in December 1971, forcing the ouster of the Croatian

leadership and instigating a wide-ranging purge of the Croatian

political apparatus. An "anti-nationalist" campaign ensued, although no

effort was made to reverse the trend of the previous decade toward non-

separatist national affirmation.

RECONSTITUTION OF THE STATE

Reborn as a federal state in theory at the end of World War II,

Yugoslavia was, as noted, in fact highly centralized in the initial

postwar period. But the processes of economic decentralization and

cultural/national reaffirmation by the constituent national groups

traced above resulted in the late 1960s in a devolution of authority and

decisionmaking from the federal to the republican level (termed

11 Unlike the other episodes of nationalism just recounted, there is a considerable literature on the Croatian crisis of 1971. See Rusinow, 1972; Lendvai, 1972; Crisis, 1972; Johnson, 1974, pp. 18-19.

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"republicanization, 11 in Yugoslav political parlance). This led in turn

to a fundamental restructuring of the Yugoslav state after 1971.

The first step in this process occurred in 1967-1968, when

constitutional amendments enhanced the importance in the federal

assembly of the Chamber of Nations--in which the republics were

represented on the basis of parity. New legislation mandated

applic.ation of a national "key" (proportional national representation)

in the federal bureaucracy. The assembly committees took on new

importance in federal decisionmaking, as they became the forum for tough

interrepublican bargaining. Decisions on specific economic, social, and

other issues were generally reached in governmental bodies, rather than

Party organs--a shift of responsibility for decisionmaking on concrete

policy issues from Party to state bodies that had begun in the 1950s.

But achievement by the republics of real influence over federal

decisions carried ~ith it the danger of paralysis, and this in fact

occurred in late 1970 when the Federal Executive Council (FEC) was

unable to carry through economic stabilization measures because of the

absence of ~hat had by then become necessary interrepublican consensus.

The possibility of a vacuum of central authority led Tito to

propose in September 1970 the establishment of a collective state

Presidency, 12 with representatives from each republic; in Tito's view,

the representatives should be "men from the republics who are not

republicans" 13 and who could represent general all-Yugoslav interests.

Tito may have thought of the collective Presidency per se as a

sufficient organizational adjustment to the weakening of central power.

But his initiative in fact focused the attention of the Yugoslav

political elite on the basic structure of the state.

The result was a fundamental restructuring of the Yugoslav state.

In mid-1971, after much interrepublican bargaining, 21 additional

amendments to the 1963 Constitution were adopted, which in effect

reconstituted the federal bodies as instruments of the republics,

composed of their own representatives on the basis of parity. 14 As Tito

12 Throughout this report, "Presidency" means the top collective leadership body (predsednistvo), sometimes translated as "Presidium."

13 Speech by Tito in Zagreb, September 21, 1970, Borba, September 22, 1970.

1 ~ See Burks, 1971, pp. 31-38.

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bad proposed, a Presidency was established as the collective head of

state, with three members from each republic, two from each province,

and Tito himself. The FEC was reconstituted on the basis of parity.

The republics assumed many powers formerly exercised by the federation,

including some of the responsibilities for internal security.

Republican-level authorities began to play a significant role in

military affairs as Yugoslavia emphasized territorial defense. 15 The

federal status of the provinces was enhanced (to the ~ismay of

influential circles in Serbia). Amendment 18 provided for their status

as components of the federation, as well as parts of the Serbian

republic.

Adoption of the 1971 constitutional amendments was followed

immediately by a crackdown on nationalism in Croatia in December 1971

and a purge of "nationalists 0 and "liberals" elsewhere in the country in

1972. This evident political backtracking notwithstanding, the process

of reconstituting the Yugoslav state on a quasi-confederal 1 ' basis

continued and was formalized in 1974, with the passage of a new

constitution. The 1974 Constitution provided, in contrast to previous

practice, that in the federal Parliament, the Feder~l Chamber as well as

the Chamber of Republics and Provinces (as the Chamber of Nations was

renamed) be constituted on the basis of parity. The state Presidency

was reduced from 23 to 9 members but remained composed of

representatives from the republics and provinces op the basis of parity.

Article 33 stipulated mandatory interrepublican agreement before formal

consideration of major legislation in the federal parliament.

This quasi-confederal state structure chartered by the 1974

Constitution has now been in place for nine years-·three of them

following Tito's death. During this entire period, the decentralized

structure itself has not been seriously questioned in Yugoslavia. Eight

constitutional amendments were enacted in 1981 to formalize the

is The impact of these developments on the military is discussed at length in Johnson. 1977, 1980, 1981.

u The term "quasi-confederal" is used in this report to describe the Yugoslav state since the mid-1970s, which has been more decentralized than any contemporary federal system but more unified than a confeder-ation. ·

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succession arrangements, but they did not affect federal-republican

relations. 17 Since the early 1950s, constitution-writing and associated

constitutional debates have served as a vehicle for addressing

fundamental political and structural issues in Yugoslavia (in contrast

to the mobilizational constitutional pseudo-discussions in Soviet bloc

countries). The absence of such constitutional debate in Yugoslavia

since 1974 suggests general acceptance of the quasi-confederal

restructuring of the state completed in the mid-1970s and the absence of

major challenges to the system of interrepublican consensus-building

that it legitimized.

To be sure, following the outbreak of unrest in Kosovo in 1981,

Serbia sought to increase the accountability of the provinces (Kosovo

and Vojvodina) to the Serbian republic. Yet advocacy by some Serbian

theorists and publicists of constitutional changes to this end 18 were

not endorsed by the Serbian leadership, which called for implementation,

not revision, of the constitutional provisions on the status of the

provinces. 19 In reaffirming support for the post-1974 constitutional

order, Serb leaders have emphasized the federal and republican

constitutional provisions on the integrity of the Serbian republic

(including the provinces), which if translated into practice would

signify a reduction of the additional prerogatives (beyond those

specified in the Constitution) the provinces have achieved de facto

since 1974.

Such efforts have been sharply--and to date successfully--rebµffed

by the provincial leaderships. The key to their success is the fact

that there are two provinces, not one. The Kosovo provincial

leadership, reshuffled in 1981, has continued to defend provincial

prerogatives even as it has sought to contain Albanian nationalism in

17 Stankovic, 1981. 18 For example, the call by a professor from Bosnia-Hercegovina for

a reassessment of the 1971 and 1974 constitutional arrangements, at a discussion organized by the Marxist Center of the LC Serbia, reported in Danas, June 22, 1982. See also Bosnian leader Branko Mikulic's rebuttal, in criticism of an unnamed individual who questioned the 1974 Constitution (Tanjug, August 19, 1982, FBIS-EEU, August 24, 1982).

19 See the discussion in Section III.

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Kosovo. 10 Yet the new Kosovo provincial leadership, preoccupied with

attempting to stabilize Kosovo, has remained on the defensive.

It has fallen to the Vojvodina leadership (dominated by Serb

nationals from the province) to defend provincial rights vis-a-vis the

Serbian republic. Article 330 of the Serbian Constitution provided that

the Serbian assembly could pass legislation binding on the republic as a

whole (including the provinces), but the provinces won de facto veto

power over such legislation in the late 1970s. Some elements in Serbia

tried to reverse this practice in 1981, in terms of pending legislation

on the 1981-1985 republican economic plan and a new republican national

defense law. Vojvodina's sensitivities have been respected to date (but

with the consequence that Serbia failed to enact this legislation). 11

Vojvodina has publicly based its 0 defense on the 1974 Constitution ("We

agreed there was no place for the thesis on constitutional changes"),

yet in fact the province defended not only its rights as specified in

the Constitution but the practices of the late 1970s that further

elevated the status of the provinces as elements of the federation,

rather than parts of the Republic of Serbia. 11

As Yugoslavia's economic situation worsened at the turn of the

1980s, the complex quasi-confederal state structure established in the

1970s was able to reach economic policy decisions only with great

delays. Political circles in the South began to speak of the need for

greater independent powers in the economic sphere for federal

governmental bodies. In September 1982, Najdan Pasic (President of the

Serbian Constitutional Court), in a publicized letter to the LCY

Presidency, warned that the principle of mandatory republican consensus

20 See the reported comments of Hajredin Hoxha (position not identified) at the LC Serbia and Marxist Center discussion, Danas, June 22, 1982.

21 Vojvodina exerted its prerogatives in other bodies as well. In December 1982, the Vojvodina Socialist Alliance (the mass political organization) refused to agree to a proposed decision of the Serbian Socialist Alliance standardizing ceremonies on Uprising Day in Serbia, claiming that Vojvodina's interests were neglected (Borba, December 18, 1982). .

22 See Politika, June 27, 1981; Shoup, 1981, p. 4; report of LC Vojvodina Provincial Committee President Bosko Krunic, Tanjug, December 21, 1981 (FBIS-EEU, January 7, 1982). The complex titles of Yugoslav leadership positions are at times simplified throughout this report.

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was being carried to the extreme. 23 At Pasic's suggestion, a "political

stabilization" commission was established under the chairmanship of

Tihomir Vlaskalic, former head of the Serbian Party organization. But

concrete constitutional or legislative proposals to modify the principle

of consensual decisionmaking have yet to be advanced, suggesting again

the extent to which--for better or worse--interrepublican consensus has

become the publicly unchallengeable basis of decisionmaking in

Yugoslavia's state bodies.

This review of the transformation of the centralized Yugoslav state

into a quasi-confederation has--intentionally, but of course

artificially--largely omitted discussion of the role of the Party, in

fact the dominant political force in Yugoslavia and thus the real power

behind this evolution. What has been the role of the LCY in the

restructuring of the Yugoslav state? Has the Party remained a unified

political organization in a decentralized state? How much has the Party

itself undergone a similar decentralizing transformation? These issues

are addressed in the following section.

23 " ••• we should investigate to see where the framework established

by the Constitution for applying the principle of mandatory consensus in decisionmaking has been exceeded ... what was, for understandable reasons, accepted as the method of making decisions on certain specifically enumerated issues ... has been spontaneously extended to almost all areas of political and self-management decisionmaking ... 11 (Politika, September 29, 1982). Pasic returned to ~his subject in December 1982, criticizing the "spontaneous extension and near abuse of the principle of mandatory decisionmaking by consensus" (Borba, December 23, 1982).

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111. IMPACT OF DECENTRALIZATION ON THE PARTY

The previous section traced the urepublicanization" of the Yugoslav

polity since the 1960s. This process was in fact centered within the

Party itself, and as such it affected the structure and organization of

the Party even befor.e the state apparatus was decentralized.

INITIAL DECENTRALIZATION

The process of urepublicanizationu was, as noted in Section II,

born from disputes within the Yugoslav leadership over economic policy

during the economic downturn of the early 1960s. Conservatives led by

Rankovic sought to strengthen the influence of the central Party/police

apparatus over the economy (and the country at large). Tito's speeches

and Party documents of the period reflected this conservative impulse, 1

yet in fact reform views espoused by the Croatian and Slovene Party

leaderships and .economic officials and managers throughout the country

won out; systematic economic reform, further downplaying state control

and emphasizing market forces, was announced at the Eighth Party

Congress in 1964 and introduced in mid-1965.

During this period, Rankovic firmly controlled the Party's central

organizational machinery, as he had since 1945. That he was unable to

affect more strongly the outcome of the Eighth Congress or block the

1965 economic reform was testimony to the degree to which the LCY had

evolved away from the Bolshevik/Soviet model as early as 1964. In

particular, it suggested the degree to which both the size and reach of

the central Party apparatus and its accepted function within the

political system had diminished. 2

Following its landmark Sixth Congress of 1952, the LCY sought to

adapt itself to the post-totalitarian, decentralized political system it

introduced in Yugoslavia without diluting entirely its Leninist core.

Organizational changes implemented in the 1950s, including

1 E.g., Tito's speech in Split in May 1962. i The number of acknowledged LCY functionaries declined from 11,930

in 1950 to 2,579 in 1957 to 1 1 123 in 1964 (Knezevic, 1979).

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decentralization or abolishment of much of the Party's organizational

machinery and many personnel control (nomenklatura) prerogatives,

sharply differentiated the LCY from other ruling Communist parties.

Although the LCY refused to allow organized political opposition, its

commitment to a redefinition of its leading role, emphasizing

ideological guidance and political activity over administrative command,

was more than rhetoric. The LCY largely abandoned the Leninist

aspiration--practiced in Yugoslavia between 1945 and 1949-·of social

engineering. 3 The limits on the powers of the central apparatus and the

beginnings of a process of decentralization within the Party itself were

evident at the Eighth Congress: The role of the Secretariat was reduced

and the republican LC Political Secretaries became members ex officio of

the LCY Executive Committee (as the top LCY body was then called).

Although Rankovic failed to block endorsement of economic reform at

the Eighth Congress and introduction of the reform the following year,

he continued efforts to thwart its implementation, utilizing the Party

bureaucracy and secret police. His efforts were finally and decisively

rebuffed at the Fourth "Brioni" Central Committee Plenum in mid-1966,

when Ti to or.de red his political demise. A purge of Rankovic supporters

in the security police and the Party apparatus, especially in Serbia,

followed.

The "Rankovic affair" forced the LCY leadership to focus explicitly

(for the first time since the Sixth Congress of 1952) on the role of the

Party itself. The Brioni Plenum established a top-level commission

charged with examining the Party's role in light of past and pending

changes in the political system. The Fifth Plenum of fall 1966 was

largely devoted to this question. On that occasion Mijalko Todorovic, a

Central Committee Secretary, noted:

... it has not been made sufficiently clear what is really meant by the ideological-guiding role of the League of Communists, what it originates in, how it should be exercised, what effect it wjll have on the organizational forms of the League of Communists, and so forth. 4

3 See Shoup, 1969; Johnson, 1972. ~Socialist Thought end Practice, October-December 1966, pp. 30-59,

at 36.

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One significant organizational change occurred at the Fifth Plenum

itself: The Central Committee Secretariat, reduced in power at the

Eighth Congress, was now abolished.

The subsequent months witnessed a wave of critical reappraisals of

the Party's role by theoreticians and political leaders alike, who,

inter alia, challenged the continued validity of the Leninist principle

of "democratic centralism," endorsed the possibility of different formal

views within the Party, and even granted the legitimacy of intra-Party

"groupings." 5 A number of Party theoreticians advanced theses about the

Party's proper organization and role that were more radical than those

aired when the Party's role was first subjected to critical examination

in 1952. Yet this ferment had a limited effect on official LCY policy,

indicating that even after Rankovic's demise, the advocates of £ar-

ranging democratization of the LCY were in the minority. In April 1967

the LCY issued official "theses" on the role of the Party, 6 but these

were more a restatement of existing practices than a formula for

fundamental organizational change. The same was true of LCY

"directives" of June 1968. 1 Proponents of democratization of the LCY

continued to put forward proposals to this end in the second half of

1967 and early 1968. Whatever resonance these initiatives might have

had was reduced by the student demonstrations in Belgrade in mid-1968, a

challenge to Party control which resulted in renewed emphasis on Party

discipline and unity.

If the year 1968 did not bring the "democratization" of the LCY, it

nonetheless brought a fundamental restructuring of the Party in the

sense of its ''republicanization." In the course of the intra-Party

discussion on the role and organization of the LCY initiated at the 1966

Brioni Plenum, republican-level Party figures called for a redefinition

of "democratic centralism, 11 not in terms of relaxing Party discipline

binding on individual Party members, but in terms of enhanced

prerogatives of the constituent republican Party organizations within

5 Details are given in Shoup, 1979, pp. 333-334, and Haberl, 1976, pp. 51-58.

6 Politika, April 27, 1967. 7 Komunist, June 6, 1968.

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the LCY. Mito Hadzi-Vasilev, an ideologist of the LC Macedonia, was

perhaps the most outspoken on this subject:

The issue of the majority and the minority in reaching important political decisions and in constituting the leading organs of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia must be approached in a new way ... independently of the number of delegates of this or that republican organization of the League of Communists, political decisions must be reached which are acceptable to all the republican organizations and each one individually .... No majority, no matter how overwhelming, can in and of itself justify a decision ... within the LCY if it is clear that the decision is unacceptable to and cannot be carried out by even only one republican organization. 8

Another Macedonian Party theorist offered ideological justification for

"republi.canization" with the claim that LCY organizations had to realize

"partial interests" as well as "general interests" and that "the LC

Macedonia legitimately had to represent specifically Macedonian

interests." 9

This explicit call for empowering the republican Party

organizations with a veto power over LCY decisions was not, then or

subsequently, endorsed by any authoritative LCY body. But it reflected

the reality of devolution of power within the LCY to the republican

level in the wake of the Brioni Plenum and the virtual dismantling of

the LCY's central administrative apparatus. Such reorganization of the

LCY was, as noted at the time, the "logical consequence" of the economic

and social reforms of the mid-1960s; 10 the latter both caused and

presupposed the former.

The shift in the locus of power and authority within the LCY from

the center to the republics was formalized in the fall of 1968. 11 The

1 Cited in Haber!, 1976, p. 59. 9 Stojan Tomic, in Preglad, July-August 1967, as quoted in Haber!,

1976, p. 60. 10 Deseta konferencija, 1969, p. 60. 11 An early indication was the discontinuing in 1967 of a unified

version of Komunist, the LCY weekly, and its replacement by pine editions (for the six republics, the two provinces, and the army); the latter edition is the one received by foreign subscribers. (Personal interview with a former chief editor of the Slovene edition, October 1981.)

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tense international atmosphere in the wake of the Soviet occupation of

Czechoslovakia. served to hasten rather than brake this process. The key

development was the convening of t~e republican Party organization

congresses in November-December 1968, in preparation for the upcoming

Ninth LCY Congress. For the first time, the republican congresses were

held before rather than after the LCY Congress and could thus influence

rather than merely ratify its outcome. The republican congresses not

only selected delegates to the LCY Congress, but they chose the members

of the new LCY "central" leadership bodies as well. The distinctiveness

of the republican LCY organizations was emphasized as they adopted their

own individual Party statutes, distinct from the LCY statute. The

provincial Party organizations of Kosovo and Vojvodina gained

substantial autonomy from the Serbian Party organization. 12

The Ninth LCY Congress, held in March 1969, formalized the expanded

powers and autonomy that the republican Party organizations had gained

at the expense of the Party center since the Eighth Congress.

Republican delegates to the Ninth Congress were bound by the decisions

of the respective republican congresses. The top organs of the LCY

were completely revamped. A Presidency 13 was established as the new

supreme Party body, replacing the Central Committee; it was set up on

the basis of strict parity, with seven representatives chosen by each of

the six republican Party organizations and three representatives each

from the two provincial Party organi~ations 1 ~ and from the ·army Party

organization. The LOY Conference was established, with standing members

selected on a parity basis, as a policymaking body intended to convene

more frequently than a Party Congress. Thus the Ninth Congress

introduced the practice followed to .this day of proportional

representation of the republican/provincial Party organizations in LCY

Congresses (in terms of number of delegates) but parity representation

in leadership organs. 15 The Ninth Congress resolution proclaimed the

u Henceforth in this report, 11 republican" generally means republican and provincial.

13 Predsednistvo, often translated as "Presidium." 14 Vojvodina Party leader Hirko Canadanovic led the drive for

representation on the Presidency for Vojvodina and Kosovo. 15 The principle is discussed by Andrija Dujic, in Reorganizacija,

1970, p. 101.

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basis on which the LCY was now constituted:

Instead of binding them in a centralized fashion, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia realizes a creative ideological-political synthesis of the views, positions, activities, and initiatives of the Leagues of Communists of the socialist republics. 16

New amendments to the Party statute at the Ninth Congress abolished the

remaining centralized organs for cadre affairs, formalizing the prior

devolution of power on these matters to republican Party secretariats

and cadre commissions. The republican LC organization (not the federal

LCY) became the highest instance of appeal for a Party member.

Devolution of political power within the LCY to the

republican/provincial level also meant rejuvenation of the Party's

cadre. After the mid-1960s, younger Party.officials of the postwar

generation moved into leadership posts; this pro~ess was hastened after

Rankovic's demise and after multiple-candidate, secret-ballot elections

were introduced at the level of the communal (opstina) and district

(srez) LC organizations. A significant if limited democratic reform was

thus introduced in the LCY and contributed to the "republicanization" of

1968-1969. 11 The generally better educated and more reformist postwar

Communist generation replaced the "old comrades" of the Partisan era--

in the backward South as well as in the better~developed North. The

Ninth LCY Congress ratified this generational change: The new LCY

Presidency contained only 12 members of the old Central Committee.

Evidently fearing that the new Presidency established at the Ninth

Congress would be excessively influenced by the republican Party

organizations, Tito proposed shortly before the Congress the formation

of an additional top-level body, an Executive Bureau. This body was

i. Devet i kongres, 1969, p. 4.16. 17 Bilandzic, 1973, p. 258. Todorovic stressed that cadre

rejuvenation "from below" was "bringing pressure to bear on the federation to solve problems" (Komunist, October 15, 1970). Data on the LC Vojvodina Provincial Committee demonstrates the extent of the rejuvenation. Only 24 percent of the 1960 Committee were postwar Party members; but 64 percent of the 1965 Committee and 92 percent of the 1968 Committee had joined the LCY after 1945 (Knezevic, 1979, p. 151).

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duly established by the Ninth Congress (over objections from the

republics--the LC Macedonia protested at the Congress itself), albeit on

the same principle of republican parity as the Presidency and formally

responsible to it. In theory, the Presidency and the Executive Bureau

enjoyed independent powers (and the Presidency reached decisions by a

two-thirds majority vote); in practice, the supreme LCY organs

themselves increasingly became instruments of the republican Party

organizations--albeit the Executive Bureau less than the Presidency.

Unanimity (i.e., the right of republican veto) was never formally

adopted as the basis for passing decisions but was de facto observed;

there is no known case since 1970 of a republican Party position being

overruled at the federal LCY level, except in the crisis situations of

1971 (Croatia) and perhaps in 1981 (Kosovo). Official and unofficial

LCY commentaries generally rejected the legitimacy of "outvoting"

(majorizacija) in top LCY bodies. 18 The consequence was that after the

Ninth Congress, the supreme LCY bodies--like the federal governmental

bodies--were often stalemated when the republican Party leaderships

could not agree among themselves.

Following the Ninth Congress, LCY theoretical discussions reflected

the practice of interrepublican consensus within the LCY and portended

the further federalization of the Party. Such political leaders as

Crvenkovski and Milosavlevski of Macedonia openly called for the

federalization of the LCY. Others were somewhat more cautious; Tripalo

of Croatia depicted the LCY in late 1970 as combining elements of both a

"unified political organizationtt and a "federation of Communist

Parties." 1 ' Such voices were opposed by theoreticians from Serbia, who

warned that federalization meant the paralysis and disintegration of the

LCY (some of the same individuals would employ the same arguments a

decade later), yet the reformist Serbian Party leadership headed by

Latinka Perovic and Marko Nikezic failed to endorse the criticism. 20

11 In 1970, Croatian leader Tripalo referred to the defeat of the principle of consensus in 1968 (Reorganizscija), evidently in the June 1968 directive; yet it was apparently tacitly accepted.

19 Reorganizacija, 1970. 20 Documentation is provided in Haberl, 1976, pp. 132ff.

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The powers of the republican Party organizations were further

consolidated in early 1970 at the Tenth Plenum of the LC Croatia, which

dealt with the so-called 11 Zanko affair." Zanko, a Serb from Croatia who

was a federal assembly delegate (and vice-chairman) and LCY Conference

member, was recalled from Belgrade for refusing to accept the directives

of the LC Croatia. This case demonstrated that the republican Party

organizations had won de facto recognition of an "imperative mandate" of

delegates to federal bodies; when so instructed, delegates had to adhere

to positions taken by the republican authorities.

The process of restructuring the LCY "from below" permitted and

encouraged, but was then overshadowed by, the nationalist revival in

Croatia in 1970-1971 reviewed in Section II. Having first encouraged

that revival to increase its own legitimacy and authority vis-a-vis

Belgrade, the Croatian Party leadership headed by Tripalo and Kucar

" mass found itself by mid-1971 more prisoner than orchestrator of the national movement" in Croatia. With the outbreak of student

demonstrations in Zagreb in December 1971, Tito intervened to force the

ouster of the Tripalo-Kucar leadership and its replacement by a new

leadership headed by Milka Planinc. 21

ATTEMPTED RECONSTRUCTION OF A PARTY CENTER

The outcome of the Croatian crisis of 1971 showed that however

much power had accrued to the republican Party organizations at the

expense of the Party center, Tito still had the personal authority to

replace a republican-level leadership (although he said it bad been

"difficult"). Yet in so doing, Tito did not "create" substitute

Croatian leaders but (by his own account) let the crisis develop to a

certain point 22 and then threw his support to rival leaders who had

backing ~ithin the LC Croatia (if not the Croatian population at large)

whose dissatisfaction with the Tripalo-Kucar line had become evident in

the second half of 1971. 2 >

21 See Rusinow, 1972. 22 Tito, remarks to the Presidency of the trade unions, in

FBIS-EEU, December 20, 1971. 23 See Antic, 1971.

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Tito acted through the LCY Executive Bureau (which issued the first

official call, on December 8, for a change in the Croatian leadership),

yet the Croatian crisis evidently suggested to Tito, Kardelj, Vlahovic,

and other central Party leaders that the Executive Bureau itself (to

which Tripalo, along with Bakaric, had been appointed by the LC Croatia)

was excessively influenced by the subfederal LC organizations and was

therefore unable to fulfill the integrating and supervisory functions

Tito had evidently envisaged for it. After the change of leadership in

Croatia, Vlahovic, speaking for Tito, announced plans to revamp the

Executive Bureau, reducing it to eight members who would be physically

present in Belgrade, would have individual functional responsibility for

different "sectors," i.e., different areas of federal LCY affairs, and

although selected by the republican LCY organizations, would not be

bound by an "imperative mandate" from them. 14 This enhanced role of the .

Executive Bureau was resisted by the republican Party organizations,

including the LC Serbia leadership (which warned, at the 23rd LCY

Presidency session, of the danger of new central Party "secretaries"),

but was nonetheless duly endorsed at the Second Conference of the LCY in

January 1972. The Conference also established the post of Executive

Bureau Secretary, intended to rotate yearly, which was assumed by Stane

Dolanc from Slovenia.

In the wake of the Croatian crisis of 1971, the LCY reemphasized

its internal unity and its responsibility for developments throughout

the Yugoslav political system, especially personnel policy. When

repetition of this injunction in leadership speeches and at the Second

Conference failed to have the desired effect on the republican LC

organizations, Tito took stronger action. In September 1972, Tito and

the Executive Bureau issued a letter to Party members calling for

greater "ideological and political unity of action," demanding attention

to the pri~ciples of "democratic centralism, .. and threatening expulsions

from the Party.

24 Proceedings of the 23rd Session of the LCY Presidency, December 20, 1971, FBIS-EEU, December 21, 1971.

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Focusing now on perceived nationalism and favoritism toward

economic managers in regions other than Croatia, Tito concluded that the

reformist Serbian Party leadership, headed since Rankovic's ouster by

Latinka Perovic and Marko Nikezic, had to be replaced. This occurred in

October 1972; once again Tito showed he was able to replace a republican

LC leadership--one that was more firmly entrenched than had been the

Tripalo-Kucar team in Croatia. But for the first time, Tito encountered

real difficulty in effecting a leadership change in the LCY--an

indication of how weak the central Party organizational levers had

become, even when reinforced by Tito's personal authority. Only after

two and a half weeks, and after Tito's effort to dictate to the Serbian

Party Central Committee by packing it with lower-level officials

initially failed, was the LC Serbia leadership changed. 25 And only

after the leadership change in Serbia did the LCY Presidency endorse

retroactively the September letter.

The new President of the Serbian Party, Tihomir Vlaskalic, was a

pro-reform professor of economics who had been a member of the Serbian

Central Committee since 1968, while its new Secretary, Nikola Petronic,

was a young member of the Central Committee Secretariat with prior

experience in the Belgrade Party organization. Thus the new leaders of

the Serbian Party did not surf ace from the polit:ical 11underground 11 of

Rankovic followers who had been retired aft.er 1966 but who retained some

following in Serbia; they were relatively inexperienced political

unknowns.

The year 1973 brought further selective removals of major leaders

in other republics who had become vulnerable to charges of excessive

"nationalism" or "liberalism." The LC Vojvodina leadership headed by

Hirko Canadanovic, ~hich had pressed the cause of near-republican_ status

for the provincial LC organizat:ion in 1969 and which had been allied

with Nikezic and Perovic, was replaced. Yet the LC Kosovo leadership,

headed by Mahmut Bakali, which was equally assertive in promoting

provincial rights, remained in office. In Macedonia, Secretariat member

Nilosavlevski (a prominent "federalist" in 1967-1968) was ousted; yet

his patron Crvenkovski (as noted above, an early advocate of republican

25 For details see Stankovic, 1972; Moraca, 1977, pp. 316-324.

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powers within the LCY) initially retained his off ice (to be shunted

aside in 1974). The leaderships of the Slovene, Bosnian, and

~!ontenegrin Party organizations were not affected.

Tito clearly intended these leadership changes to counter the

extensive decentralization within the LCY of the preceding five years

and to secure greater cohesion and unity within the Party. There was no

attempted reversion to the pre-1966 status, but Tito did attempt to

revive an LCY "political centeru which would not supplant the republican

and provincial LC organizations but would have sufficient autonomous

standing to influence them and ensure that LCY policies affecting the

country as a whole were formulated expeditiously and implemented

uniformly. The Executive Bureau began to assert itself as a federal

Party leadership organ--a process furthered by Stane Dolanc's retention

of its secretaryship following the expiration of his initial one-year

mandate.

The modified organizational relationships within the LCY that Tito

insisted on to strengthen Party unity were ratified in the resolution

and Party statute adopted at the Tenth LCY Congress in May 1974. The

amended Party statute took a stronger stand against intra-Party

factionalism and emphasized democratic centralism more than had the 1969

statute. 2 ' Yet although many observers at the time interpreted the

Tenth Congress as indicating a recentralization of the Party, that

judgment was an overstatement.

The resolution of the Tenth Congress proclaimed that while the LCY

could not be permitted to degenerate into a coalition of republican

Parties, neither could it revert to a "centralist 'supra-republican'

organization. 1127 And in fact, the republican Party organizations and

leaderships continued to enjoy extensive powers. The Congress

reestablished the LCY Central Committee with 165 members, and reaffirmed

the Presidency (with 39 members) as the supreme LCY organ. It retained

the Executive Bureau, now renamed the Executive Committee, and increased

it to 12 members. All these bodies were constituted by republican and

provincial delegation, carried out at congresses of the republican and

provincial LC organizations which again, just as in 1968-1969, preceded

H Stankovic, 1973, provides a detailed analysis. 27 Deseti kougres, 1974, p. 229.

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the Congress, 28 No effort was made to reestablish a unitary

nomenklatura; control of cadres remained essentially a republican--

not a central--function.

The Tenth LCY Congress met only two months after promulgation of

the 1974 Constitution which, as noted in Section II, completed the

reconstitution of the Yugoslav state on a quasi-confederal basis. Tito

and his remaining close associates of the Partisan generation--Kardelj

(Slovenia), Bakaric (Croatia), Stambolic (Serbia), Kolisevski

(Macedonia), and Vlahovic (Montenegro)--evidently believed that a more

unified LCY could provide the necessary political backbone for the

decentralized Yugoslav system. Yet in fact the Tenth Congress itself

marked not the beginning but: the high tide of recentralization within

the LCY. Whatever Tito's inteniions, the Party's internal structure

could not be isolated from the federal and confederal principles

accepted after the mid-1960s as the only viable basis of the Yugoslav

political system, given Yugoslavia's mult.inational composition. Revived

national consciousness, reinforced by a natural disinclination on the

parL of subfederal LC leaders to surrender political power and personal

status, first limited and eventually undermined Tito's efforts to

rebuild an autonomous Party center.

In early 1975, the LCY Presidency was increased to 48 members, now

including all 12 Executive Committee members (only six were included in

the Presidency selected at the Tenth Congress) and thus blurring the

distinction between the two bodies. 29 This reduced the importance of

21 The Presidency was composed of five members from each republic, three from each province, two from the army Party organization, and Tito. The Executive Committee was composed of six secretaries, who were also Presidency members (one from each republic), and six other members, also Central Committee members but not Presidency members, one each from the army Party organization and the two provinces, plus one each from Bosnia, Hacedonia, and Serbia. Thus while the Presidency and the Central Committee were constituted on the basis of republican parity, the Executive Committee itself was not. This discrepancy led to a change in the Executive Committee in early 1975, discussed below.

29 The six non-secretary members of the Executive Committee were made Presidency members. To maintain republican parity on the Presidency, three additional members from Croatia, Hontenegro, and Slovenia were appointed. This crucial point was ignored in analyses of the day stressing the centralizing impact of the Tenth Congress, e.g., Slobodan Stankovic, "Yugoslav Central Committee Enlarges Presidium," Radio Free Europe Research, March 3, 1975.

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the Executive Committee, which in fact failed to play the semiautonomous

role its precursor, the Executive Bureau, had played in 1972-1974, prior

to the Tenth Congress. The balance of republican/provincial vs.

"central" LCY power shifted again in favor of the former.

Thi"s shift occurred because the republican and provincial LCY

leaderships continued to use the parity basis on which supreme LCY

organs were constituted to pursue the "partial interests" of their

individual regions. 30 In Slovenia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Kosovo, the

same leadership groups that had first charted the road of

"republicanization" at the turn of the 1970s remained in place. The

"post-purge" le.aderships in Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia (where leadership

change was much more limited), and Vojvodina likewise pursued the

interests of their own regions (and regionally based political elites).

The post-1971 Planinc leadership of the LC Croatia represented, as

noted, a genuine element in the Croatian Party, one that had be.en

overshadowed by Tripalo and Kucar's attempted alliance with the "mass

national movement." Under Planinc, Croatia in fact obtained most of the

economic prerogatives nationalists had demanded in 1969-1971. In

Macedonia, Tito's wartime lieutenant, Lazar Kolisevski, had been pushed

to the sidelines by Crvenkovski and others in the late 1960s for

resistance to the devolution of power to the republican LC

organizations. After 1974, Kolisevski resumed the helm of the LC

Macedonia, yet in the late 1970s he too became a defender of the

"partial interest.s" of l'!acedonia. The new Serbian leadership evidently

had less (if any) indigenous support in the Serbian Party when it first

assumed office in 1972. Yet, even if it could not have come to power

without Tito's int.ervention, it too found itself representing Serbian

republican interests within the LCY--albeit less forcefully and without

the "liberal" overtones of its predecessor.

This propensity to promote Serbian interests was reinforced by a

challenge 11 frorn within," in the form of a claim by the LC Kosovo

leadership and the "post-purge" LC Vojvodina leadership for greater

Jo Dolanc, addressing the Slovene Party organization in early 1977, lamented "the habit of making democratic centralism valid only so far as the border of a republic" (Politike, February 18, 1977).

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